Israeli media says reoccupation of Gaza will not provide security for settlements

In an interview with the Brookings Institution in Washington last week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Israel has lost sovereignty over the country’s northern regions. “People don’t feel safe returning to their homes,” he continued. “They can’t return safely without working to address the insecurity that plagues residents.” Northerners, men and women, and all Israeli citizens, don’t need Blinken’s careful analysis because they have experienced it firsthand. If the actual standard of sovereignty is that residents can live safely in their homes with the state’s protection, then Israel’s sovereignty in the south is also incomplete.

Until October 7, Israel pursued a strategy in which settlement along the line and deterrence of the enemy were essential conditions for achieving its sovereignty. But during the Yom Kippur War, the Golan Heights were evacuated on the orders of the Israeli army, and many settlers left the West Bank on their own initiative. As had happened with the attacks on settlements in the Gaza Strip before the 2005 disengagement plan, it had become clear that settlements alone did not constitute a security belt, despite heavy military presence to protect some 8,000 settlers. On October 7, the conciliatory security concept collapsed and deterrence disappeared.

By reoccupying Gaza, Israel hopes to revive this concept, but in the opposite direction. First, the enemy must be eliminated. Only in this way can the displaced people regain a sense of security and confidence in the state’s ability to defend them, and the collapsed sovereignty can be restored. Compared with previous wars, this time the government and the army also tried to abandon the need to establish deterrence, by eliminating the factors that must be deterred as a condition for ensuring security. They believe that if Hamas disappears, the threat will disappear, and without Hamas, deterrence will not be necessary.

The significance of this strategy is to create a new situation where the army only needs to “hold” Gaza to prevent the emergence of new threats. This “maintenance” has practical implications. A Haaretz survey conducted by Yardan Michaeli and Avi Sharaf shows that Hamas controls about 26% of the territory of the Gaza Strip. A wide corridor is cut off from the Gaza Strip, bases are established along the way, and military personnel are stationed on the Philadelphia axis on the Egyptian border to stop the flow of weapons to Hamas, create a buffer zone on the Gaza-Israel border, and severely crack down on Hamas’ military capabilities and organizational structures.

This strategy takes the war into enemy territory and forces the army to remain in the Gaza Strip indefinitely. Even without a single Hamas member or a single gun, more than 2.25 million people will remain in Gaza, without alternative leadership and without an independent economic structure, making them completely dependent on the State of Israel. This dependence will come at a huge cost.

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In 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip, there was economic infrastructure, means of production and commercial relations between Jordan and Egypt, there were educational institutions, hospitals and medical teams, and especially there were local leaders in towns and villages who were ready to cooperate with the Israeli occupation to move forward with life again. The Israeli military rule at that time lacked experience and had no organized action plan, except for the legal structure established many years ago by the then military attorney general Meir Shamgar.

But the army’s experience of long-term occupation of densely populated areas will do little good now. Gaza in 2024 is not the same as Gaza in 1967. As the military infrastructure of Hamas was destroyed, the Israeli army destroyed all civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. According to a World Bank report released in May, of the 470,000 existing housing units in the area, only 179,000 remained by October 7; more than a million people were left homeless. The amount of drinking water per person (not always drinkable) has been reduced to 3 liters, and to 7 liters per day, about 14% of the minimum recommended by the United Nations. Of the 35 hospitals that operated on the Las Vegas Strip before the war, only 12 are still in use.

The UN report also shows that before the war, there were 813 junior and secondary schools in the region with an enrollment of 625,000. Since October, about 80% of the schools have been severely damaged or completely destroyed. These are some examples of the urgent needs that the Israeli military government must address. According to a report published in April by the World Bank, the European Union and the United Nations, the economic losses in the sector were estimated at $18.5 billion as of that date. This amount is equivalent to the annual economic output of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip combined. Factories and farms were completely destroyed and billions of dollars in aid are needed for reconstruction.

But before this task can be carried out, 26 tons of backfill caused by the Israeli bombing need to be cleared. If Israel remains the occupying power in the Gaza Strip, then it cannot expect donor countries – both Western and Arab – to agree to provide financial assistance for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, provided that these funds are transferred through donor countries. These countries may agree to provide humanitarian assistance, and as for the rest, Israel will have to pay from its budget.

In 1967, the then Defense Minister Moshe Dayan adopted the “open bridges” policy, which began with the transportation of agricultural products from the West Bank and Gaza Strip to Jordan, and developed into an economic policy that supports security and calm. Today’s Gaza has no “open bridges”, nor a bridge that allows a large number of civilians, including many patients, to leave the Gaza Strip, let alone goods. Israel controls the Rafah crossing on the Egyptian border and refuses to allow Palestinian Authority representatives to operate the crossing, resulting in the crossing being completely closed by the Egyptian side. As long as this situation continues, the Gaza Strip will be a completely closed enclave with no chance of recovering it and resuming its economic activities, allowing Israel to later get rid of its control and financing.

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Israel has no choice but to go to Hamas or the Palestinian Authority, and has not succeeded in recruiting local leaders willing to work with it. Akif Masri, a representative of the local tribal alliance in Gaza, explained last week that the Gaza family will hinder Netanyahu’s plans for some time to come, just as they have hindered the occupation’s plans in the past nine months. Masri referred to the efforts of all parties in Israel to find local leaders who agree to manage the Gaza Strip under Israeli supervision and control. Without leadership to mediate between the population and the military government, and without local security agencies that agree to perform police and civil security tasks, officers and soldiers will be forced to perform police tasks and manage civil security services in the Gaza Strip.

This situation is difficult to reconcile with the ceasefire agreement and cessation of the war, at the end of which Israel should withdraw from the Gaza Strip, according to the basic guidelines of the hostage liberation agreement. But if Israel continues to manage the civilian system of the Gaza Strip, it will become a sovereign element with all the international, political and legal implications, which will not constitute a guarantee of security for the residents of the “Gaza Strip”. ” The number of militants and weapons in the Gaza Strip, the ability to make bombs and the motivation of the population to oppose the occupation forces, even if the occupation forces are not organized like Hamas or Islamic Jihad, will lead to the continuation of the bloody confrontation between the army and the population, which stems from the violent conflict in the West Bank.

New organizations will emerge in place of Hamas, even if they will not have the military capabilities that the movement possesses, and they will be able to act against the Israeli army, perhaps through less sophisticated means, but they will maintain a permanent front of violence against the occupying army and create a permanent focus of threat, unable to guarantee the sense of security that the residents of the enclave need. In this case, the deterrent factor against Hamas and Hezbollah, on which the security strategy depends, will also lose its meaning. The people of Mazruddin cannot be intimidated, they have nothing to lose.

Zvi Barel

Haaretz

Palestine Institute